Balancing Quality and Quantity with Your Web Push Notifications

Briana Barkett wrote this on July 12, 2017

Quality over quantity- pretty much the right way to go with everything, right? There’s a reason it’s a popular phrase, and that’s because it’s true in a majority of situations. When it comes to web push notifications, it holds true as well. However, discussing both quality and quantity are important when determining your web push strategy.

If you’ve ever wondered how many notifications you should be sending your audience, you aren’t alone. Quantity is just as important of a component as quality when it comes to push notifications. Determining the proper frequency can be a challenge, but there are several rules to keep in mind. Here’s what you need to consider in order to nail both quality and quantity with your web push notifications.

Don’t Over Send

The most important rule when it comes to quantity is to not over send notifications. People are already bombarded on a daily basis with emails, texts, and other notifications. Sending numerous notifications every day is a quick way to annoy your audience, and will likely result in a loss of subscribers. Remember, quality is more important. If you are sending numerous notifications each day, it is highly unlikely each one is high quality and relevant to the people you are sending them to.

Keep in mind there is no one right answer to how many notifications you should be sending your audience. Yes, you can go overboard and send too many and upset your audience. For each new campaign you create, think about your users and if the notification they receive will actually be useful. Thinking about notifications in this way (rather than trying to hit a certain number limit) is a much better way to utilize this platform.

Make an Impact

The reverse problem of sending too many notifications is to not send enough. The problem with too few notifications is that your audience is likely to forget about you and your brand. Instead, you need to make more of an impact by engaging with your audience on a more regular basis. This might mean daily or weekly, it depends on your brand and the types of campaigns you are creating. If you run an ecommerce store, for example, you might engage less frequently than a news blog that regularly sends out breaking news alerts. However, if you find yourself only sending one notification out each month, you likely aren’t utilizing the platform to its full potential.

If you aren’t sure of what types of notifications to send your audience, check out our article on creating a web push strategy. This should help you come up with some ideas to fill up your calendar. As we said earlier, your customers have a lot going on and are receiving a lot of information daily. While you don’t want to overwhelm them with constant notifications, you also don’t want to go unnoticed. Finding this balance will be crucial to your success with this platform.

Develop Repeating Notifications

Now that you understand that both extremes are not ideal when it comes to web push (as in too many or too few notifications), let’s now talk about how to ensure the quality of the notifications you do send are up to par. One such notification that is useful for retargeting users is a repeating notification that only delivers to users who haven’t visited your site in a while.

Send out a weekly notification to users who haven’t visited your website in a certain amount of time to try and recapture them and boost traffic to your website.

Users who regularly engage with your website do not need a reminder to visit you, and in fact would likely not appreciate a notification like the one above. However, this type of notification is a powerful tool for retargeting old users. You can determine the length of time you deem as too long. Using the previous ecommerce vs news website example, you might set the length of time as one month for an ecommerce site and one week for a news site. By creating a segment of users who fit this requirement, you can then set up a repeating notification to target users who fit that criteria. By utilizing these proper segmentation techniques you are ensuring the notification you deliver is relevant.

Quality Equals Relevancy

We’ve mentioned it before and we will mention it again- the notifications you do deliver need to be relevant to the people who receive them. An increase in the number of notifications you send is alright as long as they continue to be relevant and of high quality. You can achieve more relevant campaigns by utilizing segments to create smart audiences that have something in common. This might be a certain page they have visited, their location, how much they have spent, and more. There are plenty of custom events and attributes you can create to fit your website accordingly.

Another type of relevant notification you can send is a triggered notification. These notifications are sent as a result of an action a person takes at your website. Highly relevant, these notifications are beneficial to the user and are easy to set up on your end. You can read our documentation about triggered notifications here.

Timing is Everything

This notification is best sent in the evening when people are most likely off of work and relaxing, rather than first thing in the morning.

To wrap things up, keep in mind that timing your notifications correctly will have a major impact on their success. For example, sending three notifications in one hour will feel like overkill, even if they are well thought out campaigns. You should also keep in mind the subject matter of your campaign. Take the above notification, for example. Schedule it to send in the evening rather than first thing in the morning to increase the relevancy. Keep in mind you can send notifications according to time zones so that your entire audience is getting the notification at the time you intend. Keep in mind you should also refrain from sending notifications super early in the morning or super late at night.

Wrapping Up

Creating a successful web push strategy involves considering both quality and quantity. While there’s not a set number you should shoot for, sending too many or too few notifications can be detrimental. Rather, focus on creating campaigns that are relevant and useful to your audience, and be sure to time them appropriately. Each brand will end up with a different average number of notifications sent, and that is okay. As long as you are considering the needs of your audience, you can’t go wrong.